James Street Community Garden | Public & government service

James Street Community Garden

Address: corner James Street and Young Lane 2016 Redfern NSW Australia

Website: http://jsrcg.blogspot.com.au

Likes: 217

Add/Update information

Reviews

Tags

• Businesses
• Public & government service

24.01.2022 It's our start-of-spring working bee this Saturday in the garden. The soil is warming up and it's time to get seeds in for vegetables including beans, carrots, cucumbers, eggplant, lettuce, potatoes, pumpkin, tomatoes, zucchini and corn. We welcome new members: pop along on Saturday to say hello and see how we do things. We start around 9am and go til about 11.30am. The garden is on the corner of James Street and Young Lane, Redfern.

23.01.2022 Costa gave a great demonstration of compost-making on ABC Gardening Australia on Friday night. It's pretty much how we make ours in the garden.

22.01.2022 Happy spring James Street garden neighbours! A tip for composting: it's super important that the compost is a blend of nitrogen material (for example, your kitchen scraps, lawn clippings) and carbon material (dried, 'brown' things such as dried leaves, straw and torn up newspaper and cardboard). When you put your kitchen scraps in the bin, please can you also add some 'brown' material. But it's really important that the brown material is torn up in fairly small pieces or stri...ps. Our compost won't break down if whole folded newspapers are added and it makes for a messy job for someone to tear up after they've been in the bin for a few days! thanks so much! JSRCG Committee

20.01.2022 It's our August working bee this Saturday (from 9.15am-ish, James Street Reserve Community Garden, corner James Street and Young Lane). New members welcome. We'll be getting beds ready for spring planting, weeding, doing some general cleaning up and, of course, working on the compost. Ahead of the bee, here is the first in a series of posts about composting. WHY COMPOST Compost is great for the garden, the environment and the community. It is full of nutrients and alive wit...h worms and micro-organisms. It adds humus to the soil which helps bind soil particles together, and helps the soil to hold water. It is a great way of stopping vegetable scraps going to landfill where they contribute to methane production. (Vegetable and food scraps are about 25% of household garbage). Additionally, people come to the garden with their compost materials which helps to broaden community connections and bring visitors to the garden. HOW COMPOST WORKS Compost needs the right ratio of carbon (or "brown" material dry, dead organic material) and nitrogen (or "green" material live organic material). The right carbon to nitrogen ratio is 30 parts carbon to 1 part nitrogen. It also needs, air, heat and moisture. When there is the right combination of these elements, the compost heats up, worms and micro-organisms eat through the scraps and burrow through them, and the ingredients turn into fine, lightweight compost. If there is insufficient air and dry carbon material, the compost gets too wet and smelly. At its worst this becomes an anaerobic process (without air). The compost won't break down in this situation. WHAT TO ADD TO COMPOST Carbon/brown materials: paper and cardboard torn into small pieces; the rolls from toilet paper and paper towel (they give the compost structure, creating semi-permanent gaps that hold air and keep the compost aerobic); dried leaves (although some native species and bamboo leaves do not break down well); straw; sawdust; tiny wood chips; coffee husks; teabags. Nitrogen/green materials: vegetable and fruit scraps, spent plants and cuttings from the garden; used coffee grounds; cow manure and horse manure (from organic sources); seaweed; grass clippings (in small quantities). WHAT NOT TO ADD TO THE JSRCG COMPOST Anything inorganic (ie, plastic); pet poo; hair; meat; bread, cooked rice and pasta; the contents of Bokashi bins. Plastic-like bags that claim to be compostable (brands such as BioBag or Multix Greener Compostable Bags) don't work in our compost because it doesn't get hot enough to break them down. STAY TUNED FOR THE NEXT INSTALLMENT!

16.01.2022 Hi one and all... it's our July working bee this Saturday morning, from 9.15am-ish to 11am-ish. New members welcome. Come and see what we do and how you can be involved. Corner James Street and Young Lane, Redfern.

14.01.2022 Great advice here about how to propagate plants from cuttings...

14.01.2022 Here's part two of our post about composting - ahead of our next working bee tomorrow, Saturday August 1. Anyone interested in learning more about the garden and/or becoming a member is welcome to pop along. We get going from around 9.15am and go for at least a couple of hours. The garden is at the corner of James Street and Young Lane, Redfern. Tomorrow we'll be doing general gardening tasks including weeding, preparing the beds for spring plantings, and managing the compost... bins. Compost is the very heart of our garden. THE JAMES STREET RESERVE COMMUNITY GARDEN'S SPECIFIC COMPOST SYSTEM We have thought hard about how to make our system as simple as possible. Visitors to the gardens will notice deposit bins to which new material can be added. Bins that can receive material are labelled; bins that are 'resting' (ie, in which the compost is breaking down) are labelled "do not add" and are sealed. BETWEEN WORKING BEES Anyone adding material to the bins is encouraged to make sure they are adding carbon/brown materials as well as their kitchen scraps. (Carbon/brown materials include paper and cardboard torn into small pieces; the rolls from toilet paper and paper towel; straw; sawdust; tiny wood chips and coffee husks.) Members with access to the shed are encouraged to pull out the compost twirlers and aerate the compost in all the bins, plus add additional carbon/brown material. AT MONTHLY WORKING BEES Members pitch in to help transfer the material from the bins that have been receiving fresh material to one or more larger bins where the material is layered with more carbon/brown matter. These bins are taped and labelled "do not add". Ideally, the base of the bin will be torn up corrugated cardboard and stems to create some air and stop the compost getting soggy. FINISHED COMPOST Perfect compost is fine, black and crumbly. In our circumstances, it's hard to make perfect black fine compost. Finished compost is available at bees for everyone to share. Often, we don’t have the time to do the last 10% of breaking down that results in fine, black and crumbly compost. But it’s perfectly acceptable to put slightly less rotted compost onto the beds, allowing it to break down for a week or so before sowing seeds or planting seedlings.

14.01.2022 All the things that are lost ... "Once biologists suspect a documented species’ extinction, the challenge shifts to proving whether it has disappeared forever, or just disappeared from sight."

11.01.2022 What an incredible story! In these troubled times of climate change, pollution and species dying out at alarming rates, to bring something back to life from dormancy is so symbolic, Dr. Sallon said. To pollinate and produce these incredible dates is like a beam of light in a dark time.

11.01.2022 What a brilliant story!

06.01.2022 Something lovely about a flower, about awe, about questions and curiosity, from the great Richard Feynman...

03.01.2022 The garden's broad-beans have infestations of aphids... given we're an organic garden, we'll be using some of the following techniques to tackle them.

01.01.2022 Our first working of spring was a ripper. Thanks so much to Fred and Cress for their brilliant work laying sleepers to hold back soil run-off from the fallows. They made heavy labour look like light work. And thanks as always, to Kati, without whom the garden could barely function. Great too, to see Lydia back! We've missed you. We welcome new members... send us a message here on Facebook if you're interested and we'll pass on information about how you can join!